Vaudeville
Variety Entertainment of Yesteryear
What is vaudeville?
Get
some basic background information from this PBS documentary series American
Masters. Click on the video clip picture for two
minutes of show clips.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/vaudeville.html
Who was
important in vaudeville?
List
the names that you recognize. Make a short
list – and check it twice – after visiting this page of who’s who of vaudeville
fame at American Vaudeville
Museum .
http://vaudeville.org/index_files/Page1702.htm
How did
vaudeville sound?
Visit
the following two sound media web sites to get an idea of the variety and
content of the early stage show acts.
%
Hear the
Sounds! - The
vaudeville stage brought together acts of every description, origin, and style
just as cities in the nineteenth-century brought together more people of
various backgrounds then ever before. These early sound recordings, primarily
recorded for Edison Records' Vaudeville Series in the early twentieth century,
present just a small sampling of that diversity. (from site)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/easton/vaudeville/audio.html
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The Minstrel
Show – Scroll
down to Side B of the Ragtime and Minstrel Songs and click on “I’ve Got To See The Minstrel Show” performed by Arthur Collins. If you have listening time, you may select
any of the other shutter menu selections with listening links. Take notice of the musical genres!
http://vintage-recordings.com/minstl.html
When were vaudevillian
acts first recorded?
The Library of Congress has opened an audio sampler of
its American Variety Stage
recordings. Scan through the annotations
to get an idea of when the recordings were made. The first recordings were not vinyl
records….so do read on for the rest of the story.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vshtml/vssnde.html
Where did
vaudeville take root? Why did audiences
change?
Believe
it or not, “vaudeville theatres functioned as a type of educational
institution,” according to this document written by Rick Easton of the
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/easton/vaudeville/vaudevillemain.html
Thanks for
dropping in to this listening activity.
Be sure to put your
list of recognized vaudevillian names in your music folder.
Have
questions?
Write the questions
down and add them to your music folder.
We’ll open the
curtain to the answers in our next class discussion.
This page
created by Patricia
Jimenez for McDaniel College SLM 521